Eric Turner is the technical director and owner of Turner Group, an event management company. His team uses Vectorworks for all of their projects ranging from corporate keynotes, breakout and ancillary programs to rock and roll tours, expo floors, musicals, theatre Installations and retrofits, permanent Industrial installations, and much more. Live Design chats with Turner about Vectorworks as an essential tool.
Live Design: How long has Vectorworks been part of your toolbox?
Eric Turner: Our team has been using Vectorworks since about 2011. We use Vectorworks throughout the entire design process with both clients and partners. From room and space allocation, seating layouts, through the stage and scenic design, rigging, lighting and audio designs, and through to the actual executive on of the program. Vectorworks is a vital part of what we do on a daily basis.
LD: Does it help you with workflow, and with presentations of your projects?
ET: Vectorworks is vital to our workflow, and how we are able to collaborate with our partners in near real time. The progression of Project Files alone has been a real game changer in how we work. With nearly all of our partners and collaborators being remote in some way, Vectorworks gives us the flexibility to continue to move a project forward with very little delay in the process. The flexibility to export multiple types of files for client presentation decks, shop prep, and other vendors, is a huge asset to the workflow. We have also found the render engine to be another valuable tool in the arsenal. With it, we are able to create a realistic visual for the clients to understand what their programs will look like. The ability for our lighting partners to use it for pre-viz, also helps us to be that much further ahead when the trucks hit the dock, especially with the tighter timelines and accelerated load in times of late. We have been recently tasked with creating a deck for a high level client presentation to help visualize the look and feel of the program. Vectorworks enabled us to collaborate seamlessly with our design partners and the creative team through the process.
LD: What are the new features in the most recent Vectorworks release are of interest to you, can you explain them and why they are an improvement or added features?
ET: Each year in September, with the new release, it’s like Christmas for us. There is always the excitement of what new features are being released, and how those features are going to improve our workflow, speed and efficiency. With the rise in trucking and fuel costs, the new Cable and Power Planning feature is a great new feature to help us better plan for the sheer amount of cable that we have to order and have shipped. Copper is not light and it rapidly eats up volume and weight, both on the truck and in the air. This will also give us the ability to better plan and coordinate with our venue partners on the amount of power needed for any given application. The additional updates to the Soft Goods toolset will provide us another much needed flexibility in how we design and plan for what we actually need on a project. As our physical hardware needs change, the updates to the software to be able to run natively on the new Apple Silicon is a huge plus for our team.
LD: What are the reasons to use Vectorworks and why or how should new people in the industry get started?
ET: We believe that Vectorworks is the very best tool in our industry. The fact that we are able to collaborate natively with our Scenic and Rigging partners alone is a huge plus for us. It really cuts down the import and export process across multiple softwares, and keeps us on task and on time. We also find that the learning curve is much easier to overcome for new users. This means that we can onboard new team members or interns much faster and more efficiently. As the industry continues to evolve rapidly and the programming team at Vectorworks works furiously to keep up with the changes, Vectorworks has been established as the premier design and collaboration tool in the industry. Simply put, there is no other product that we would use. We encourage anyone new in the industry to choose Vectorworks as it is the most widely used design software on the market. Additionally we highly recommend it for any industry veteran that is considering a change in software.
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